Those seemed to be Cam Neely‘s thoughts Wednesday, as the Bruins president answered a question about the anticipated bump by smiling and quipping, “it’s better than 69 [million].”

The projected cap, which is contingent on the Canadian dollar staying the same, will make it easier for the Bruins to keep their team together, but not much. The idea of adding key players in free agency will be out of the question, but then again it generally has been for a few years now, with the exception of the incentive-laden deal given two summers ago to Jarome Iginla.

Not counting Marc Savard, the Bruins have $49,897,857 committed against the cap to 10 players for next season. Dougie Hamilton and Carl Soderberg lead the list of players due for raises from their current cap hits, though Torey Krug and Reilly Smith can also expect pay bumps after playing this season for $1.4 million apiece.

“When you’re a team that spends up to the cap and you are spending to the cap and you are into LTI, there’s a lot of discussions and conversations and pencils and erasers that have to be in play,” Neely said. “Fortunately, Charlie and Mr. Jacobs give us the opportunity to spend to the cap. Until they say we’re not, we’re going to continue to try and put the best team on the ice. Having said that, it’s easy to spend money; you’ve just got to spend it properly.”

“Based on what we’re hearing, it’s all based upon the Canadian dollar,” Neely said. “They have a pretty good idea of the revenues that are coming in. It’s just a matter of Canadian revenues and what happens with the Canadian dollar. It gives us a pretty good idea of where we’re going to end up, but if we’re going to err, we should err on the lower side.”

By DJ Bean | Comments Off on Bruins break ground on Warrior Ice Arena as construction of practice facility begins

Rendering of Warrior Ice Arena from the Mass Pike. (Courtesy of Bruins)

The Bruins broke ground on their new practice facility, which will be called Warrior Ice Arena, on Wednesday. Cam Neely, Charlie Jacobs, Peter Chiarelli, Mayor Marty Walsh and New Balance chairman Jim Davis were among those on hand for the event.

Warrior Ice Arena, which will be located in Brighton as part of New Balance’s Boston Landing project, is expected to open in September of 2016. The Bruins will continue to practice at Ristuccia Arena in Wilmington until then.

That’s great news for the Bruins, eventually. Though both Neely and Jacobs thanked Ristuccia at every opportunity Wednesday, Ristuccia is not an NHL-caliber practice facility. Furthermore, its location is inconvenient to Boston.

The Bruins don’t have many things on which they can’t sell players. They’re a winning organization, they have a good coach, they spend to the cap annually and they have people in the front office who players throughout the league respect. Their practice facility, on paper, is really their only clear shortcoming when it comes to places to play for prospective free agents.

“I really think it means a lot to players. It means a lot to the organization and to the players,” Jacobs said. “What I mean by the players is if I’m one of them — Big Zee, Looch or Seth Griffith or whoever it is – you’re doing that grind of back and forth to the rink. Likewise, on an off day when the Celtics may be playing or there’s an event in the building, you’re out here. It means a lot to have a shorter commute.

“It makes life a lot easier, as we probably all are aware, but then you think about courting potential free agents. To be able to take them to not only the Garden and show them the work we’ve done there, but say, ‘Hey, listen. Come check out our practice facility,’ that’s a big selling point for a lot of clubs. It should be one for Boston’s and it will be very soon.”

Both Neely and Jacobs said that the team’s priority was to build a new facility within Route 128, with Jacobs saying he was “over the moon” with how things fell together with New Balance. Jacobs added that he feels the Bruins will “set [an] industry standard in terms of amenities, technology and quality when it comes to this training facility.”

The Bruins have signed a letter of intent with Boston Landing to build a new practice facility in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood.

The facility will include 25,000 square feet of locker room, training and office space. A statement released by the team indicated the B’s are in the “design phase” of the project, with construction estimated to begin in spring of 2015 and completed in the fall of 2016.

The Bruins will continue to practice at Ristuccia Arena in Wilmington until their new facility is completed.

Following is the press release:

BOSTON, MA — Boston Bruins President Cam Neely announced today, Tuesday, July 8, that the Bruins have signed a letter of intent for a long term-lease with Boston Landing, a mixed-used development in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood of Boston, to build a new professional standard hockey rink that will serve as the team’s practice facility.

“I am thrilled that we have found the Bruins a new practice home within the Boston city limits,’ said Bruins Principal Charlie Jacobs. “Our goal is to set the industry standard in everything that we do, and we are confident that our new practice facility will do just that. As we enter the design phase of the project, we look forward to sharing details as they become available.”

In addition to ice time, the agreement includes approximately 25,000 square feet of dedicated locker room, training and office space. Construction is estimated to begin in Spring 2015 with completion for Fall 2016. Elkus Manfredi Architects will do the design and John Moriarty & Associates will handle the construction.

“Since joining the Bruins in a front office capacity, a goal of mine has been to move the Bruins into a first-class practice facility and this agreement moves us closer to accomplishing that goal,” said Neely. “The vision that New Balance has for the Boston Landing project is exactly what we were looking for, and we are confident that through this partnership, we will build a facility that our entire organization will be proud of.”

Boston Landing is a 14-acre mixed-used development in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood of Boston that includes the new world headquarters of New Balance, which will be completed in Fall 2015. A commuter rail station will also be built on the Framingham-Worcester line with completion for Fall 2016. In addition, the development includes additional office buildings, retail and restaurant space, a hotel and a sports complex.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Boston Bruins, a truly world-class organization, to Boston Landing,” said Jim Halliday, Managing Director for NB Development Group LLC. “This agreement reflects our vision of Boston Landing that transcends typical brick and mortar real estate development by truly enhancing and activating the area’s experience for tenants and residents, and also creating a destination use for visitors.”

Participating brokers included Steve Purpura and Chris McCauley from Transwestern/RBJ and Sean Gildea and David Smookler from The Dartmouth Company. Boston Landing is being co-developed by HYM Investments, headed by Tom O’Brien.

The Bruins previous practice facility, Ristuccia Memorial Arena in Wilmington, MA had served as the Bruins practice home since the 1987-88 season.

By Mike Petraglia | Comments Off on Charlie Jacobs on a window of opportunity for Bruins: ‘I do believe we’ll be right back there’

With a talented core and a young group of complimentary players in the fold, Bruins management and ownership feels there won’t be a drop-off in performance for while.

As a matter of fact, owner Jeremy Jacobs, son Charlie and team president Cam Neely said Tuesday during their season-ending media availability that there’s no reason to think the Bruins aren’t poised for another run at the Stanley Cup in 2015.

“[There’s] a tremendous amount of confidence in our both on-ice leadership and off-the-ice leadership,” Charlie Jacobs said. “A lot of character in our dressing room, and it starts with Zee [Zdeno Chara], but listen ‘ there are a lot of complimentary pieces, and when you consider Patrice [Bergeron] and Krech [David Krejci], and we may have lost something with Andy Ference but we picked it up with Jarome [Iginla]. And then there’s a lot of character and leadership, and they held each other accountable, and you saw in your exit interviews ‘ they all felt as though they maybe didn’t necessarily play their best but they let the team down, and that meant more to them than, say, their individual stats. And I think that speaks volumes about the mentality in the locker room itself, and that’s what you aspire to have.”

The Bruins reportedly did suffer a bit of a hit Tuesday with word that assistant general manager Jim Benning has been named general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, replacing the fired Mike Gillis.

“In terms of our organizational leadership, I think with Cam [Neely] and Peter [Chiarelli] and Don Sweeney and Jim [Benning], they’ve done a great job of really trying to assemble a mixture of both veteran and some young leadership to bring us back to the promised-land,” Charlie Jacobs added. “And you need that mix. You need the right mix. We maybe erred a bit, a little bit, in terms of having too many inexperienced defensemen. If you think about it, really only two of them ‘ two veterans on the back line this postseason. But as my dad referred to, that will pay dividends as you progress moving forward. So listen, I have great faith in both aspects. I do believe we’ll be right back there. I expect that we’ll be back there. Stranger things have happened, but I hope we start right out of the gate where we left off in March, not necessarily at the end of April.”

Cam Neely, Jeremy Jacobs and Charlie Jacobs held a press conference Tuesday at TD Garden to wrap up media availability for the 2013-14 season.

Though little news emerged from the press conference, Neely did say that the team has not discussed using compliance buyouts on any of their players. Peter Chiarelli vowed not to use them last season, and Neely hinted the same might go for this offseason.

“We haven’t talked about that, no,” Neely said.

Teams are not allowed to buy out injured players, so even if the team wanted to buy out a veteran like Chris Kelly (two more years with a $3 million cap hit), the herniated disc that caused him to miss the playoffs could get in the way of such a move.

One thing discussed annually at these press conferences is the status of the team’s next practice facility, and Charlie Jacobs gave little update.

“We just had a meeting about our practice facility and [there are] a couple of different options,” Jacobs said. “[It’s] best that I keep where we’re at right now a little close to the vest and say that we are moving along, and pursuing two distinct possibilities, both within 15 miles of the rink here.”

The two possibilities are believed to be the facility being built in Brighton next to the New Balance building and a potential facility that would be built next to the Garden.

Here are some of the other topics that were discussed:

– Neely wasn’t a fan of his team getting itself in hot water during the playoffs, such as on Milan Lucic‘s spear of Danny DeKeyser, Shawn Thornton squirting P.K. Subban with a water bottle and Lucic’s threats during the handshake line at the end of the second round.

“You don’t like to see that happen,” Neely said. “The stick work is something that, you know, now-a-days you just can’t get away with. There’s two referees, there’s all kinds of cameras, there’s reporters that tweet information out as soon as it happens. You can’t get away with certain things like you used to be able to do. The water bottle incident is something that as an organization you don’t like to see happen to be quite honest with you. Stick work happens, it’s not just our team that does it, it does happen. I can tell you this, in handshake lines there’s probably worse things that have been said that just don’t get public. In the history of handshake lines, I can almost guarantee that.”

– Neely defended the lack of movement at the trade deadline. The team tried trading for Alexander Edler, but that deal fell through and the team had to settle for Andrej Meszaros, a depth player who served mostly as a healthy scratch in the postseason.

“I can speak to what we tried to do at the deadline. Not in detail, but with what was available and how we thought we wanted to add as opposed to add and subtract, we thought we had something in place but it was predicated on another team making a deal and it didn’t pan out,” Neely said. “But again, we were going through that really good stretch of hockey and we thought we really just needed to add some depth and if a player with term became available, like the one we were trying to acquire, it would have been a bonus for us. But obviously I don’t think that is the full reason why we didn’t get past the second round, to be honest with you.”

– Jarome Iginla is the biggest name on the team set to hit free agency. Because of the cap penalties the team will have to pay for his one-year deal from last season, the Bruins’ best shot at keeping him is to get him to take another one-year, bonus-padded contract. Neely would like the player to return.

“I thought he started out a little slow when he came on, he came on late and he came on strong,” Neely said of Iginla. “Obviously he’s a leader, he’s the captain of another team for a long time and he came in and added in an element to our group, especially the forward group. He ended up scoring 30 goals which is not easy in this league anymore and we would like to try and see if we can figure something out moving forward with him. We will see where that goes but I thought he fit in really well with our team.”

– Neely didn’t say where things stand with Thornton, though he did echo Peter Chiarelli’s sentiments about there being less of a place in the NHL for fighters.

“I still believe that we like the physical game and physical play which at times leads to dropping the gloves,” Neely said. “But there’s always been a lot of talk, primarily with the media, about you know, ‘is fighting still necessary in our game?’. I think with the way the game’s played and how it is played and how physical it is, I still feel it is still part of the game. But where it goes, you see from like 70s, 80s, 90s, it’s a little different or probably still trend that way, yes.”

By Mike Petraglia | Comments Off on Jeremy Jacobs has no intention of selling Bruins to buy NFL’s Buffalo Bills: ‘I kind of like where I am’

When Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs expressed interest in buying the Buffalo Bills in April, after the passing of longtime owner Ralph Wilson, Bruins fans wondered if that meant the end of his stewardship of the NHL franchise.

Tuesday, during a 25-minute address to reporters at TD Garden, Jacobs made it clear that he has no such intentions and is quite happy as the owner of the “Original Six” franchise.

“Well, I can’t buy the Bills, because I own the Bruins,” Jacobs said, referring to the NFL by-laws that prohibit owning teams in different cities. “That’s not a bad place to be. I kind of like where I am.”

Jacobs is among the wealthiest and most successful businessmen in the world, owning the Delaware North Companies, with an individual net worth of approximately $3.1 billion. Jacobs was initially among a group of several Western New York businessmen reported to be interested in the Bills. Another businessman reportedly interested was real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

Jacobs has owned the Bruins since 1975. Jacobs also represents the club on the NHL‘s Board of Governors and serves on its Executive Committee. At the NHL Board of Governors meeting in June 2007, Jacobs was elected Chairman of the Board, replacing the Calgary Flames‘ Harley Hotchkiss.

Jacobs made changes in management of the Bruins, with the retirement of veteran team president Harry Sinden from active management of the team into an advisory capacity. New management included Peter Chiarelli and head coach Claude Julien. Cam Neely, who was on the dais Tuesday with Jacobs and Jacobs’ son Charlie, was also lured back to the new organization and subsequently named as President of the team.

Since 2008, the Bruins have made playoffs every year, winning the Stanley Cup in 2011, reaching the Cup finals in 2013 and winning the Presidents’ Trophy this past season as the team with the best record and most points (117).

Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, TD Garden, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association announced have pledged to donate a combined $250,000 to the One Fund Boston, which raises money for the families of those affected by the Boston Marathon bombing.

Jacobs will donate $100,000, while the Garden, NHL and NHLPA will donate $50,000 each. In addition to those donations, Bruins players and staff have donated a combined 80 tickets to first responders who came through in Monday’s events.

‘The efforts that have taken place from ownership, management, players and all our associates to put together the proper recognition at tonight’s game for those who responded, helped and comforted all those who have been affected by the tragic events this past Monday have been remarkable,’ Bruins PresidentCam Neely said in a statement. ‘Every member of our organization has assisted in many different ways to make sure we make Boston proud, make our fans proud and show what it means to call Boston home. I am very proud of our entire organization for the compassion and support they have all showed, although not surprised. We are all ‘Boston Strong.’’

Additionally, Brad Marchand will raffle off his suite at the Garden for the Bruins’ first home playoff game, with all the proceeds going to the family of Martin Richard, the eight-year-old Dorchester native who was killed in the bombings.

‘Our whole team saw the photos of Martin at our game from last Thursday and learned that he and his family are big fans of ours,’ said Marchand. ‘This is just one small gesture which I hope can help the Richard family during this incredibly sad time for them. What they are going through is unimaginable and we will try to assist them in any way we can.’

Both the Bruins and Sabres will wear “Boston Strong” decals on their helmets Wednesday, with the Garden showing a “Boston Strong” video prior to the game. Fans in attendance are encouraged to sing along with Rene Rancourt during the National Anthem.